The invention relates to a collector or header of a heat exchanger according to the preamble of claim 1.
The term header generally not only means an intermediate header or a header on the outlet side, but also a distributor on the inlet side.
Many of such multipart headers are known. In the past, for such a header one has generally made a cap, a tube bottom or a compartment subdivision of sheet metal or a plate-like material, caps having been deep-drawn for example of sheet metal. For special purpose constructions, injection moulded parts have already been used in the past. For example an evaporator, which is in particular also to be employed in motor vehicle air conditioning equipment, for a distributor a sandwich construction of injection moulded plates has been employed according to the DE-31 50 187 C2, in which the chambers required in a distributor have been obtained by corresponding groove formations.
In the following, instead of the term injection moulding the term diecast will be used in the description of the invention, the terms diecast and injection moulding being, however, considered to be synonyms within the scope of the invention.
It is already known per se to make the cap and the tube bottom of a header or a comparable structural part, such as a refrigerant distributor (DE-A1-42 12 721), each by diecasting. The diecast materials on aluminum basis used in most cases, however, cannot be soldered nor brazed due to their high portion of silicon in aluminum alloys. Therefore, in such cases one has assembled the header or a similar structural component by using inserted seals. This requires an additional constructional effort and restricts the permanent closeness.
The inset of the refrigerant distributor of the DE-A1-42 12 721 is not made as a diecast part but as an extruded piece (column 4, lines 1-3). Extruded pieces on an aluminum basis have always been able to be brazed due to the composition of their aluminum alloys different from that of diecast parts.